Mawil was born in East Berlin in 1976. He drew his first Lucky Luke from an issue smuggled into the GDR by his best friend's grandmother, who brought it in from the West hidden in the fake bottom of a package. After the wall came down, he would go on to reproduce his own comics in a copy shop before studying graphic design. His end-of-studies project, the comic "We Can Still Be Friends" and the books that followed were published by Reprodukt in Berlin and have been translated into several languages. In 2014, he won the Max and Moritz Prize for best German-language comic book for "Kinderland" (Reprodukt; Europe Comics in English). Mawil continues to work and live as a comic book author in Berlin. He doesn't like drawing horses, but he is a cycling enthusiast. "Lucky Luke Saddles Up" (Egmont Germany; Europe Comics in English) is his first official "Lucky Luke" spin-off.