Roger Stern's plotting secret in his Amazing Spider-Man 1980s run: Villain-on-Villain Violence:

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It's not where I first noticed it, but going back across Stern's run, this is the first place you see it, when the Black Cat targets purveyors of black market high art.
ASM # 232 Mister Hyde stalks the Cobra
Then you have Tarantula picking up where Cobra left off. Cobra chasing down Nose Norton was yet another instance: ASM #231. Ned Leeds and Marla Madison are caught in the middle of this one! Then, Ben Urich's caught up when Tarantula picks up the trail. So Norton is sort of the second hunted villain in a story line, in that someone besides the cops or Spidey is tracking a character who we'd agree is not deliberately on the side of angels.
But the next storyline has even more villains chasing each other. Will O' the Wisp returns for revenge against Brand and ends up fighting their latest, fatal experiment. Tarantula's transformation scared the heck out of me! I just got to peep a few pages while I waited on Mom at the grocery store. I didn't get either ASM #235 or 236 then. I'm not sure I'd have wanted them!
We're not even done. Here's the Vulture pursuing his crooked business partner, in a flashback expanding his origin. I'm not saying these are all the same, at all.
And while it wasn't on Spidey's radar yet, the original Hobgoblin kills the robber, Georgie, who showed him a lair of the Green Goblin, which he discovered accidentally. Hobgoblin doesn't play fair at all. There's no rescuing his other villainous accomplice, Lefty Donavon. But if you've never read those stories I'll say no more. It's enough to say Hobgoblin's last scheme under Stern's pen is a blackmail scheme, with, if not villains, lots of shady, rich country club members with naughty secrets recoreded by Norman Osborn. That's in AMAZING #249.

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