Issue(s): Amazing Spider-Man #242, Amazing Spider-Man #243
Cover Date: Jul-Aug 83
Title: "Confrontations!" / "Options!"
Credits:
Roger Stern - Writer
John Romita Jr. - Penciler
Kevin Dzuban / Dave Simons - Inker
Eliot Brown - Assistant Editor
Tom DeFalco - Editor

Review/plot:
This issue resolves the Peter Parker/Amy Powell/Lance Bannon triangle by revealing that Amy and Lance have an open relationship wherein they can date other people, but they just wind up making each other jealous and Peter got caught in the middle.

The couple make up, and Mary Jane Watson returns to Peter's life and the cast of the book.

The villain of this arc is the awesome Mad Thinker...

...who decides to investigate what he's heard about Spider-Man.

While still in prison, he mentally activates one of his battle-droids.

Spider-Man is able to destroy the robot in issue #242 (but the Thinker is able to confirm that Spider-Man has a Spider-Sense)...

...leaving issue #243 mainly as a downtime issue, although Spidey does stop some revolutionaries from holding a church hostage.

In addition to Mary Jane coming back, the big news is that Peter Parker decides to quit grad school.

Between being Spider-Man and being a photographer, going to school is just too much for him.

Quality Rating: A-

Historical Significance Rating: 4 - Mary Jane returns. Peter quits grad school.

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References:

• Peter thinks to himself that he's "hardly even thought of his graduate studies except for the days I spent in New Hampshire playing boy photographer -- and Spider-Man". It's a reference to Marvel Team-Up #129-130, and even after reading those issues, it seems like a non-sequitur.
  
• Some footnote-less Mad Thinker flashbacks: Fantastic Four #15, Fantastic Four #28, and Avengers #39.
  
• Peter receives the grade of a test that he took in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #76. (He got an A). That same issue is the one where the Black Cat was badly injured.
  
• The model of droid the Thinker uses is the same as the one that he used against the FF in Fantastic Four #70-71.
  
• Catching up with Mary Jane, Peter mentions that his apartment was robbed in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #72.
  
• Peter Parker met his professor Dr. Sloan as Spider-Man in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #36. Spidey meets Sloan again this issue as he is talking to Doc Connors. Spider-Man wanted Connors to investigate the Thinker's android to see where it came from.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

A notebook on Ben Urich's desk reads "Bob Camp(phone #)-re:Axe Murder". Bob Camp was an inker on the Conan titles and other places around this time, but I don't know if "axe" refers to anything special.

I hate these issues only because they brought Mary Jane back. They should have just kept her as the bitch that turned down Peter marriage proposal

Grad school must not have agreed with Peter - he looks like he's on death's door in that last panel!

Cartoonist Evan Dorkin has a letter in issue 242.

The Mad Thinker plotline started here is finally, belatedly wrapped up over a decade later in Spider-Man Team-Up #2.

Much like his early battles with the Fantastic Four, this is basically a victory for the Thinker since he gains knowledge in the end. I like the idea that he could pick a fight with almost any hero in an attempt to learn about them and then tuck that information away for later.

MTU #129-30 are referenced because it's Spider-Man's encounter with the Thinker's "Intellectual Robots" in those issues that brings him to the Thinker's attention, in a neat bit of continuity-weaving by Stern