Similar to some of Sumerak's other Power Pack mini-series, this one starts with what appear to be done-in-one stories, which later connect into a larger narrative. First, the kids team up with Captain America, despite his objections about their age, to stop Taskmaster after he swiped some data from a Stark Industries research lab.
Besides Tasky losing first to a bunch of elementary schoolkids, then senior citizens (WW2 buddies of Captain America, but still, no Infinity Formula for these guys), we also get a scene where he mocks Power Pack not only for being kids, but for their costumes. This while rocking his Udon Studios, "my good costume is at the dry cleaners," look.
Then Katie Power zaps him in the face. Deserved.
Second issue, AIM stole an experimental armor (thanks to the info Taskmaster swiped for them), and Jack gets it in his head that if they recover it, Tony Stark will pay them a big reward. AIM is, surprisingly, prepared for the kids, and in an escape attempt, Jack suits up in the experimental armor. Then accidentally attacks Iron Man with it. They free his siblings and stop AIM, but when Jack asks about a reward for rescuing the armor, Iron Man says they can just deduct it from the cost of the damage Jack did to said armor.
Which is such a billionaire move. It's pocket change to Stark, but he'd rather come up with an excuse to stiff a kid and disguise your own incompetence.
In the last two issues, the Power family travels to New York City on vacation, and the kids try to help the New Avengers fight Kang and his army of guys in suits based on Iron Man's experimental armor, as he was behind the schemes in the first two issues. I guess this is his idea of fighting honorably, stealing period-appropriate technology to fight with. Minus his own futuristic stuff that freezes his opponents in place. So honorable!
How well known the Power Pack are varies from mini-series to mini-series. Wolverine knows them, but they'd been in at least one, maybe two, other mini-series with him by this point. Captain America apparently vouched for them to Iron Man somewhere between issues 1 and 2. Taskmaster knows them, and says they're a joke among the costumed community. As he's running around in a tracksuit and a skull mask like some doofus with an urban explorer Youtube channel, so glass houses and all that. AIM has heard of them, enough to have weapons prepared to counter their powers.
Kang, however, doesn't know them, dismissing them as innocent children, until they attack him. At which point they're flung into a future where Kang runs things and they must team-up with their older selves. How their older selves are there if they were chucked into the future, I don't know. Obviously they make it back to the mid-2000s, but then the dystopian future never comes to pass, so. . .
I did a longer review of the mini-series 3 years ago.

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